


Empty Room

by TitaniumScorpion



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Drinking, Drugs, Emetophobia, F/M, M/M, Suicide, episodic, nonlinear, watch out kids
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-27 04:00:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12073092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TitaniumScorpion/pseuds/TitaniumScorpion
Summary: This was never meant to last- I wish it wasn't so.After a sudden, inexplicable visit from the Reaper, Khadgar is left to piece together the answers to the unanswerable.---College AU. Themes of suicide throughout. Tread lightly if you're sensitive to that.





	1. khadgar's drunk

**september 8**

Khadgar’s drunk in the corner of some shitty frat party, hand twisting in the wool of his sweater in an uncontrollable display of the loudly obtrusive displacement he feels, stomach seasick on waves of vodka and head hazy in none of the ways he wanted it to be. The music’s too loud and he can’t decipher any of the words, there are too many sweaty-faced strangers who are way too close, the shared body heat of the room’s population is stretching upwards towards nauseating. But, fuck, where else is he going to go?

There’s a dim chatter in his ear and he thinks it’s maybe been there for the better part of a minute, but honestly, he couldn’t have been bothered to address it until just now, when the words snap into coherence and become “Hey, skittletits, you alright?” He looks to his left and there’s Vedaya, an empty red cup perched on one horn and cheeks flushed purple, her grin wide and toothy against pigeon-blue gums. She steps closer, tracking his line of sight. “I’ve been talking to you for, like, five minutes and you’ve just been staring at the… is that Dean Wrynn, nude?”

Khadgar blinks, realizing that is, in fact, what he’s been looking at, or through, as the case might be, a canvas tacked up uncomfortably to the peeling, smoke-soaked wall. “Uh, I think it’s someone’s… art project. What’s up?”

“By the Light, dude.” She rolls her eyes, her thick Draenic accent just making her more incoherent through the drunken haze. “We’re gonna go run to town for some smokes. You in?” She puts a hand on her hip, and here in a room full of people he’s never met, despite having seen all the blue nakedness she has to offer, he’s not sure he knows her more than anyone else. He shakes his head, blinking, trying to clear the soft unconsciousness murmuring sweet nothings into the corners of his eyes.

“No, Ved. I’m not trying to start smoking again. I thought I told you that. Listen, what shit-ass Soundcloud rapper is this? Who’s in charge of this playlist? It sucks. Can I change it?”

“Wow, you’re shitfaced.” She turns over her shoulder, giggling to a square-jawed blood elf Khadgar doesn’t recognize and she’s probably fucked, knowing her taste for breaking the same unspoken rules he’s spent his life mastering. Must be nice to have that kind of freedom. “Have fun being boring, I guess. I thought we were here to kick it, Khadgar.” For a moment, there’s something out of place in this loud, vibrant room, something soft and sad and unable to be said in words, only in tone. “If you wanted to be sad you could have just stayed home.”

“I’m not sad,” he says, remarkably coherent in the sudden hot flare of anger. “I’m just too drunk. It’s been a minute.”

“Uh huh,” she says, clearly unconvinced. Rolling forward onto her toes despite being taller than him, she presses a kiss to his forehead, and, god, he doesn’t know if it’s the heat or the alcohol or something he doesn’t want to address yet, but it’s the most uncomfortable shit in the world. If he could crawl out of his skin he would, but as it is, he’s left uncomfortably watching her go, the sway of her hips in her form-fitting jeans and the glint of the half-light off the ring on her tail technically beautiful but currently no more appealing than the flash of a serpent’s fangs, and then there’s nothing but the nail-polish remover burn of vodka in the back of his throat. By the time he can next remember to think, he’s hunched over the toilet in a dorm he doesn’t recognize and there's a girl intermittently cooing at him in comfort and yelling about how awful the new It movie was, and then there’s the accusatory void of the outside air as he stumbles his way back home, hoping he remembers enough about his new dorm to get there, and then he’s in bed.

The dark is briefly illuminated by the cold, unfeeling face of his phone. It’s Ved.

_You were a real asshole tonight._

He texts back, _Oops. Sorry._

 _You have to get over this eventually. You’re just being selfish at this point._ Suddenly, he remembers what the party was for, and bites his tongue so hard that the taste of blood manages to overtake that of bile.

_Yeah, I know. Happy birthday, anyway._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you can probably infer, I've written this much in part to deal with my feelings on Chester Bennington's passing, and to deal with things that have happened in my own life. That being said, I'm trying to gauge whether or not to continue this. Please let me know what you think- if a few people enjoy it, I'll write more. 
> 
> Additionally, I don't know how to use this site very well. Please pardon any formatting errors while I troubleshoot.


	2. bummer, dude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up- graphic depictions of suicide in this one.

**august 13**

The press release Koernig Tech had pushed to everyone’s school email had remarked that Medivh Aran had been killed by an accidental overdose. The public coroner’s record had a bit more information than that- that the 42-year-old victim had been found aspirated on his own sputum, and mercifully wasn’t dead for long in his single apartment- a lack of appearance at an evening event prompted acquaintances to worry. Friends remembered him as vibrantly social despite struggles with a seizure disorder that would sometimes render him briefly medically comatose and prone to erratic and sometimes frightening mood swings. Students remembered him as an animated, well-informed teacher eager to share his prodigious gift of magic if you proved yourself worthwhile. His partner of a year and a half remembered him as a tender, gentle lover during his good days, always coming up with new and exciting things to do, much beloved despite his certain “moods” and inexplicable bursts of frantic research that left him unreachable and incoherent. 

No one, though, remembered him as suicidal. 

It’s hard to definitively write off an overdose as a suicide, anyhow, when the patient’s been in and out of hospitals for as long as anyone can remember, prescribed drugs that come with barbed hooks of addiction and expected to manage on his own. When confronted about the well-folded note found on Medivh’s nightstand- _Take care of the crows, they come by the porch for food every morning around 7_ \- his partner, Antony Moroes, had only shrugged, strangely distant. 

“He wrote that note years in advance in case anything happened while no one was around. He loved those crows. Named all of them, knew which was which. I hadn’t the faintest how he did it.” 

The first responders, though, would probably tell you otherwise. There’s a certain difference between intentional and unintentional overdoses, and while sometimes it’s as evident as all the person’s worldly possessions being set out and organized with explicit instructions for what to do with them, sometimes it’s as simple and unspoken as the aura in the air. Nothing about Medivh seemed to suggest a man with a death wish; his career was only heading upwards, with several papers coming out in publications within the year and a new Abjuration and Warding minor program at KT set for the new school year. His apartment was found the same as it always was- clothes thrown haphazardly across the couch, dirty dishes in the sink, at least five half-read, dog-eared books on every flat surface, looking more like a whirlwind had hit it than a man. 

But, thinking critically, who overdoses on medication they’ve been taking for decades? 

Truly, those paramedics would tell you, despite its emptiness, something heavy hung in the empty Vicodin bottle still held in the late professor’s hand. Some dread unspoken circled like vultures in the phone left unplugged, manually powered down and laid on the bed beside him. And, certainly, there was something looming on the laptop screen, left open on the coffee table in Medivh’s small, cozy living room, which lit itself with a small chirp, as if sorry to interrupt. No password necessary, the email application left open as a new missive arrived from a contact simply marked TA- 

_Professor,_

_This is my third attempt to reach you this week. Moroes has informed me that you recently took a tumble and were sent to the hospital; however, I am told that you have since been released. I respect your need for recovery- that being said, I am beginning to receive emails from students wondering when our first meeting of the semester will be, and have been forced to realize that I do not, in fact, know, myself. I would simply like to know whether or not you are alright._

_See you next week._

_Khadgar_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is all I have for now. Please let me know if you would like to see more.
> 
> update: fuck it lol more is happening


	3. khadgar hits a bong

**september 9**

“You doing okay, bud?” 

“For the eleventh time today, I’m fine,” grumbles Khadgar, though he’s not stupid enough to believe it. Not yet. Despite the throbbing, angry aftermath of last night, he doesn’t think he’s lost quite enough brain cells to buy into his own lies. 

Bummer, though. 

The dwarf on the screen of his laptop pouts, wrinkling her freckled nose. “You don’t sound fine. If anything, I’m worried about your bladder, my dude,” she adds with a chuckle, pointing a stout finger through the camera. 

Khadgar glances to the water bottle beside him, which he’s refilled several times since opening Skype. “I’m literally just hungover, Thariah. You’re not my mom.” 

“I should be,” Thariah says in a lilting chirp, grinning widely now, tossing her auburn bob with a flourish. “I do a better job of taking care of you than you do, and I’m speaking to you from the past. I guess I’m just precognitive. Maybe I should be the one off at fancy magic college.” 

“Time zones don’t equate to time travel,” he mutters, but there’s something comforting about Thariah’s songbird-voiced jabs. She’s been a part of his life since long before he left for college, drawn to him by the fact that she had a great-great-granduncle (or something, dwarven lineage isn’t the easiest thing to track) with the same name- emotional intelligence isn’t his strong suit and, even to him, it makes sense that he’d turn to her now. 

“Be a lot cooler if they did.” Thariah’s gaze focuses on something closer to her than the camera angle provides, and her dark lips twist into a grimace. “Ugh, dude, I gotta go. It’s lunchtime for the kits. They’re always hungriest a few weeks after hatch season ends, I think it’s their growth spurt. We’ve got this one that I thought was a tawny but I think it’s fledging into a redtail morph- so cute!” 

“Send pics,” Khadgar says absently, knowing she will whether he likes it or not. 

“I could send you a lot more than that if you sent cash! Seriously, these guys need homes. Nobody rides anymore!” 

“I’ve literally fucking hated heights since I was like two, first actually useful spell I learned was a minor teleport, I tell you this once a week, you never remember it, also I live in a dorm room. Go feed the griffins.” All the same, he smiles. “Miss you, Thar.” 

“Miss you too, Gar. Kisses.” She leans towards the camera with a plum-colour pucker and the feed cuts, leaving Khadgar alone, the sunset sending orange fingers through the slats of the blinds over the wide, luminous window. KT loves to situate its magic majors almost exclusively on the top floor of every dorm, still placing an awful lot of faith in tenuous, dated beliefs in proximity to the sky bolstering connection to the astral energies of the universe, or some shit. For Khadgar all it means is that the sun bounces the fuck off the horizon-chewing ocean and looking down makes him wanna throw the fuck up. 

Then again, though, it’s worth it for a single, if only to not hear shit about the mess. 

He’s usually more hygenic, honest, but with an indefinite pass to stay out of class if he wants (due to the “traumatic nature” of his “circumstances”- basically, they’re worried he’ll pop himself, too) and a gaping void where he’d centered his life for a year and a half, it generally doesn’t feel worth it to leave for more than meals. There’s wifi and the smoke detector can be covered- he’s got plenty to do. 

Speaking of, almost automatically (because it’s not like he can be alone with his thoughts sober for more than, like, five minutes) he reaches for the table, wrapping a fist around the worn blue ceramic of his closest friend, fishing around in his nest of blankets for a hopefully-functional lighter, sparks it up and lights the half-packed ashy bowl, realizing only once his throat becomes rapidly furious with him that while Khadgar From Two Days Ago may have had the presence of mind to leave his future self some green, he apparently didn’t leave any water. 

In the ensuing coughing fit, resenting every cent he spent on this shitty campus-grown weed, he hears the distant flutter of a poster peeling off his wall- it’s his woodcut print of an ancient map of the Planes, cuz no mage ever got good by ignoring his forefathers, right? It flutters to the floor with that weird wibble-wobble noise reminiscent of the one you get when you wiggle something laminated, alighting almost comedically delicately on a pile of dirty clothes topped artistically with a couple of empty 40s. 

Khadgar sits there in his shit-ass single, choking on bad weed, the air smelling of stale sweat and sadness, and wonders why he can’t even keep a poster up right. On his dresser, his phone vibrates accusingly. 

When he picks it up and checks the unsympathetic screen, for the briefest moment, the world falls out from under his feet, leaving him floating in a void he’s been becoming quite acquainted with as of late. It’s the void he gets sucked into when something reminds him of Me- 

… of Professor Aran, and he forgets where he is in the space-time continuum, and thinks hey, maybe all this has just been some self-loathing fantasy, maybe he still has a professor and a job and a, like, reason to live or something. 

But oh, yeah, Medivh isn’t around to text from Moroes’ number anymore. 

_Hey kiddo. Been a minute. Wanna get lunch?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not much of an artist, but [here's a little sketch of Khadgar!](https://s26.postimg.org/5u0h5mfw9/Screen_Shot_2017-09-19_at_1.41.36_PM.png)


End file.
